Friday, January 29, 2016

Making Tracks

Author’s
Note: The writing inspiration has been as muted as the snowless southern Vermont winter. It reminds me of the common entry in 1950s autograph books:

"Can’ think

Born dumb

Inspiration won’t come

Rotten ink

Rotten pen

Yours forever

Amen”

I am heartened by the fact that a few loyal friends have asked if I have done any more writing.

I first wrote this little piece back in November but deemed it not good enough to post.

But I think I will because it is so true. And also because I re-visited a writing book that reminded me that writing begets writing. Not writing begets not writing.

Enough said.

The
flame of October is past and the muted tones of November and early December are
upon the hills … subtle sage frost-kissed greens and rusty oak vie with a dozen
shades of grey on the forested Vermont landscape.

The
conversation too has changed. The early morning coffee club at the old country
store no longer talks solely about the roads and politics, but now about the
winter predictors; wooly bear caterpillars, the Old Farmer’s Almanac and the height of the hornets’ nests. And it
has turned to hunting -- turkey, bear and white tail deer.

“Eight-pointer
feeding under the apple tree up Chunk’s Brook … hope he still hangs out there
by the time I’m legal to shoot him.”

“Flock
of turkeys … must be 30 of ‘em crossing Camden Valley by the pond every
morning. Looks like a couple of big toms sharing that harem.”

“Surprised
they’ve survived. Lots of fox tracks by that same pond”

“Gathering
apples in my high orchard found a big deer yard. They gotta be well fed on all
the drops.”

“Put
up my tree stand and, man, did I see some big scrapings on the beech trees.”

“Bear
scat near old Doc’s deserted cabin up West … been diggin’ up ground bees, too.”

Linn
listened and wondered at the ability of the hunters to find the often elusive
prey, to track them by their habits. How they watched for signs and soft
footprints in the barely frost touched ground, distinguishing the coyote from
the bobcat, the group from the individual as wild predators vied with the
hunters. She marveled at the lore and the study that allowed a hunter to get to
the heart of the life of these wild entities that they hunted, revered and
consumed.

She
heard the stories of the hunt from the grizzled old hunters as they impressed
the neophytes, brandishing their orange pasteboard hunter safety cards as they
stood in line at the old country store to buy their licenses, their permission
to join the fraternity of hunters. Linn was a writer and she itched to record
the stories told and the subtle passing of the torch from generation to
generation. Her fertile imagination concocted the conversations that must have passed
as the skill of tracking, observing, getting to heart of the hunt ...
understanding, was shared. Yet, she knew that such understanding was beyond
her. This was not her territory, her tracks to decipher or her skill to
embrace.

In
addition to being a writer, Linn was a reader. How ironic that she should, just
as the mystery and excitement of the hunt was upon the community, chance across
this quote:

“Animals, as they
pass through the landscape, leave their tracks behind. Stories are the tracks
we leave” -- Salman Rushdie

Linn
came from a long line of storytellers. She kept snippets of her favorite
stories folded in her wallet. She revisited favorite books, following the trail
to a joy of words, wisdom and mystery presented and, sometimes, resolved, and
to information. She hunted for the escape into a slightly alternative world
just as the hunter escaped his work-a-day world for the brief respite of the
hallowed woods in November.

“Ah,”
she thought. “I better ‘make tracks’ and get on with writing my stories. No one
has the same stories, the same track or the same scent.” “Keep writing,” she shouted to her writer
friends and to herself.

Linn
did not want them -- Eric, Paige, Phil, Mallory, Adair, Rachel, Sue, John, Ed
and all the rest -- to disappear. She wanted a long adventure as she followed
their tracks into the personal forests of their stories; the plots, the ideas,
the interests, the intelligence, the emotion.